Songfacts®:

• On "Easy Lover" Miley Cyrus explores the emotional push and pull of a passionate but turbulent relationship. One of those romances where you know it's a bad idea, but here you are again.
• "Easy Lover" first emerged during the recording sessions for Cyrus's 2020 album Plastic Hearts but was shelved because it didn't quite match the album's glam-rock vibe. When Beyoncé tapped her to contribute to Cowboy Carter, Cyrus retrieved the song from the drawer and re-worked it into a country-flavored track. Bey ultimately selected another song, "II Most Wanted," for the album.
  
  Revisiting "Easy Lover" for Something Beautiful, Cyrus gave it new life with a fresh arrangement. She brought in Alabama Shakes' Brittany Howard for the guitar work, resulting in the final, genre-blending version heard on the album.
• Tie me to horses, I still wouldn't leave you (Tell 'em B)
  
  When Cyrus reworked "Easy Lover" for consideration for Cowboy Carter, she ad-libbed "Tell 'em B" as a playful shoutout to Beyoncé. After Cyrus reclaimed the track for Something Beautiful she debated what to do about the "Tell 'em, B" line, but ultimately kept it as a tribute to the song's journey and its connection to Beyoncé.
• Thematically, "Easy Lover" fits within the emotional terrain Cyrus traversed in the years after her 2019 split from Australian actor Liam Hemsworth. Songs like "WTF Do I Know?" and "Slide Away" openly reference the demise of that relationship.
  
  While "Easy Lover" doesn't name names, the emotional DNA is familiar: intense love, incompatibility, and the struggle to move on.
• Cyrus wrote the song alongside Michael Pollack, Ryan Tedder, and Omer Fedi, and co-produced it with Pollack and The Killers collaborators Shawn Everett and Jonathan Rado.
• Cyrus co-directed the showbiz-themed video with Jacob Bixenman and Brendan Walter, who worked on all the album's visuals. We see Cyrus deliver a choreographed showgirl routine with backup dancers, wearing vintage fringed Mugler chaps from the designer's 1992 collection.
  
  The visual is an ode to resilience via rhinestones: showbiz sadness turned up to 11 and filtered through a Hollywood haze.
• The phrase "easy lover" has had a curious little life in pop music. Phil Bailey and Phil Collins made it sound like a cautionary tale in 1984, and Ellie Goulding turned it into something aching and modern in 2023. In Miley's case, it's almost entirely ironic - her lover is anything but easy.